


We Know Your Thinks

by Corycides



Series: Tumbling On [11]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality was in negotiation. It was a shared delusion, ghosts from the past made solid by their minds, that herded them through the mountain pass. Charlie stepped away from a nanite-shadow wearing Danny’s skin, bumping into Bass’ arm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Know Your Thinks

**Author's Note:**

> maywitch prompt: Telepathy (Time-Travel was too complex! There was lots of story)

Reality was in negotiation. It was a shared delusion, ghosts from the past made solid by their minds, that herded them through the mountain pass. Charlie stepped away from a nanite-shadow wearing Danny’s skin, bumping into Bass’ arm.

_solid muscle/muscle memory of his fist in her stomach/stomach hitching as he watches Strausser pull the trigger/trigger-happy cat-murderer glaring at her when she didn’t coo over his kills/kills them all for her/her, he came back for her/her bass_

She jumped away from him, muttering a strangled apology and leaving an imprint of warmth and want. Bass swallowed the heat in his throat, tried to will the hard ache between his thighs away and wondered what she’d picked up from him. Maybe nothing. His mind - full of dark fracture points to hide things - seemed to confuse the nanites’ mapping algorithms.

Charlie, on the other hand, lived her life just under her skin. Thoughts skipped like stones across her mindscape, always just one second thought away from graduating to speech. It had been a surprise to realise she wanted him (nearly as much as he wanted her), her thoughts tracking the evolution from hatred to hunger. Too much intensity there for her brain to find somewhere neutral to settle.

‘Stop here,’ the Danny said. ‘Recharge. Sleep.’

It stood in the middle of the pass, all open ground and lowering clouds. They knew everything, but didn’t understand it all yet. The concept of shelter, of wanting to hide from the elements or keep dry, made no sense to a creature that was the elements. Or maybe it did. Maybe their huddling under trees offended the little bastards.

Good.

Camp, such as it was, played out as usual. Rachel and Aaron sat together, twitching when their knees bumped or their arms touched. Their minds were the nanites playground, accessible as Bass’ wasn’t. The clarity of their ‘thinks’ made them unwelcome company. It was one thing for Charlie to know Bass had a hard on for rescuing her; another to know that the man who helped raised her thought dirty thoughts about her ass. As for Rachel…

‘Every time she looks at me, she thinks of Danny,’ Charlie told him one night. Privacy had changed since the nanites took over. Now it was having the space to verbalise your thoughts - to develop them - before they spilled from nerve to nerve. ‘Every time she thinks, “Why did she live? Why her, not him?”. Then she’s sorry, but she still thinks it.’

Miles sat with Bass - back to back, after so much time the only secrets they had were insignificant - and Charlie. Except on nights when he couldn’t stop thinking, and then he withdrew to the lonely side of the campfire.

_big blue eyes/eyes like ben/ben’s daughter, she’s ben’s daughter/daughter? i have a daughter, rachel?/rachel, i don’t love you/you can’t do this to me, i don’t have time for a kid/kidding, you’re kidding right/not right, she’s ben’s girl_

No secrets anymore. It didn’t mean that sometimes they didn’t appreciate the chance to pretend. Miles loved Charlie too much to be honest with her. They dozed in the dark, under a sky eaten black by nanites, in a maze of communal dreams. In the morning the nanites would question them about their dreams - fascinated with this illogical tangle of the subconscious - and Bass would lie. He always lied.

‘Killing,’ he’d say, finding that flat, cold place where the cracks shattered out. ‘About those who betrayed me; about them not betraying me; about killing them either way.’

Not about Charlie, or the terrible potential of redemption in earnest blue eyes and endless well of second chances. Not of possessing her, with Chase right there to know, and breaking her, so all the kindness was just for him.

They walked through a world stitched together, held together, by nanites. Their own minds were traitors, broadcasting any intentions of revolt they might harbour. It turned out telepathy was the least useful superpower ever, just the power to shame yourself in public. Even then only when you touched, skin and nerves connecting through their tiny, mating machine parasites.

That night the nanites took them to a cottage. Charlie leaned against Bass’ arm and quietly, discreetly, wove her fingers through his. Their palms pressed together, rough skin and the tender heart of her hand, and her mind poured through his like a spill of warmed treacle.

_a kiss in the rubble of willoughby, lips bitter with burnt patriots/patriot hand on her throat and bass’ blade in his throat/throat moving under her fingers as she rode him/him staring down at her ‘charlotte’_

It was part-mindfuck, part-fuck, part-coded plan. Their version of ‘just saying places’. The thought of explaining the code to Miles made Bass’ chest spasm with a mute laugh. It hurt. He rubbed his thumb over her palm, a slow caress.

_sun-kissed slopes of her breasts, sticky with honey and seen through his lashes/lashes tickling his cheek as he leaned in close to whisper/whisper of breath against his ear as she ordered ‘fuck me now’/now and here and Miles glaring over the fire._

She sighed and took her hand back, honey thoughts slipping away from him. This close there was still feedback, a tickle of awareness that she was there, awake and her feet were cold. It was the closest to alone in their brain they got these days. Bass hated it, down in that cold, broken part of his mind where the others couldn’t see. He didn’t want to be alone again.


End file.
